Site Search Navigation

Search NYTimes.com

Loading...

See next articles

See previous articles

Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Supported by

The Democrats Still Have a Problem

June 11, 2014 2:33 pmJune 11, 2014 2:33 pm

So … I am aware that having the Republican House Majority Leader defeated by a no-name insurgent tends to cut against my ongoing argument, hotly contested by Jonathan Chait and others on the left, that the Democrats should be worried about their coalition holding together in the next presidential cycle. But because I’m stubborn, I’m going to celebrate Cantorgeddon by going one more round on the subject of whether President Obama’s approval ratings should be a cause of concern for his party, by responding to my colleague Nate Cohn’s contention that for now, at least, they shouldn’t be.

In particular, Cohn argues that we should probably expect modern presidents to struggle to maintain solid approval ratings outside of presidential election years, and that liberals need not be too troubled by Obama’s current slump:

… Mr. Obama’s lower approval ratings … might just reflect the difficulty of maintaining election-year levels of support from Democratic-leaning voters, and the difficulty of earning crossover support in an increasingly polarized era.

No president has averaged 90-plus-percent approval ratings among his partisans throughout his term, even though about 90 percent of partisans usually vote for their party in presidential elections. Bill Clinton, for instance, averaged an 84 percent approval rating among Democrats in Gallup’s polls in 1997 … That’s only a tick higher than Mr. Obama’s 80 percent approval rating among Democrats in Gallup surveys so far this year … Nonetheless, Mr. Clinton earned significantly higher general approval ratings than Mr. Obama because he earned considerable crossover support, including from about 30 percent of Republicans. Mr. Obama’s opposition has been extremely unified. That makes it difficult for Mr. Obama to earn overall approval ratings at or above 50 percent.

So Mr. Obama’s approval ratings don’t necessarily mean that he has lost an unusual amount of support where it matters. Mr. Obama might well be retaining the approval of a healthy percentage of his supporters from 2012, with his approval ratings deceptively low because of nearly unanimous Republican opposition.

It’s hard to find evidence suggesting that Mr. Obama’s weakness stems from a deeper problem, like alienating some portion of Democratic-leaning voters.

Cohn is quite right that polarization has put a pretty hard ceiling on Obama’s potential support. But the president has faced “nearly unanimous Republican opposition” for almost his entire presidency, so while that opposition explains why he can’t get to Reaganesque approval ratings, it doesn’t really explain his post-2009 ups and downs, up to and including his long post-2012 swoon. And I do think there’s evidence that this swoon reflects a deeper problem than just a lack of enthusiasm among loyal Democrats — that it is, in fact, possibly hitting the party “where it matters.”

For instance: The president’s job approval ratings, while lower since 2012 among Democratic partisans, have also fallen sharply among independent voters, substantially more of whom now rate his performance unfavorably than did so during his previous, first-term approval-rating lows. This pattern is not entirely dispositive, of course, because the category of self-described independents changes with political circumstances, and many people who fall into it are really partisan leaners who almost always vote G.O.P. or Democratic. (This is part of why Kerry and Romney both won the “independent” vote without winning the presidency.) But Obama’s current struggles with this group still suggest that his approval-rating problem isn’t exclusively a matter of undermotivated Democrats who will eventually fall into line for his successor; it’s also a sign, at least potentially, that he’s lost the confidence of at least some voters who are more weakly attached to his coalition, and whose votes that coalition needs.

Obama’s current approval measure is much higher than George W. Bush’s at this point in the 2006 midterm, and Obama is less of a drag on his party’s midterm prospects than Bush was …

Yet the public’s desire for a change from the president’s policies is almost as widespread as it was during Bush’s second term. [emphasis mine — R.D.] Thinking about the next presidential election, 65% would like to see the next president offer different policies and programs from the Obama administration while 30% want Obama’s successor to offer similar policies. In April 2006, 70% wanted the next president to have policies different from Bush; 23% wanted similar policies. By contrast, in June 1999, at a later point in the Clinton administration, just half wanted the next president to pursue different policies.

And to the point, raised by Chait in our back-and-forth, that the G.O.P.’s unpopularity is necessarily the Democratic Party’s saving grace, these Pew numbers seem worth highlighting:

… Despite weak job ratings for Republican leaders, the public is divided over whether their economic policies or Obama’s would do more to strengthen the economy over the next few years. About four-in-ten (43%) think Republican leaders’ policies would do more for the economy while about the same share (39%) says Obama’s policies would be more effective.

Then just to add a further data point, since Chait seems confident that the president’s numbers are trending upward now that Obamacare has stabilized: This week’s Bloomberg poll, taken after the Bergdahl and V.A. controversies, has Obama’s approval rating at 43/53, the lowest number of his presidency in that survey. And I would also note that if you can tear your eyes away from Cantor’s dégringolade, you’ll notice another headline today that may soon have some implications for the public’s judgment on this president’s stewardship …

… which will not, I freely concede, translate into a rejection of his party if the Republicans ultimately cannot get their act together. So far it’s true, as Cohn points out further on in his piece, there aren’t a lot of indications in the midterm polling that the G.O.P. is currently making the most of the opportunities created by the public’s discontent. And it’s also possible that the aftermath of last night’s primary upset will create a new downward spiral for Republicans, a new doom loop of intransigence and folly, that would leave the party ill-equipped to make the most of the country’s apparent desire for a post-Obama change.

Those are an excellent reason for Democrats not to panic — and again, with Hillary in the wings, I don’t think they should. But they aren’t reasons for them to be unworried in the face of evidence that their underlying advantage for 2016 is distinctly fragile, and that clear opportunities to shatter it exist.

What's Next

About

Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. Previously, he was a senior editor at the Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com. He is the author of "Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class" (Hyperion, 2005) and the co-author, with Reihan Salam, of "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream" (Doubleday, 2008). He is the film critic for National Review.